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tisdag 3 mars 2015

I just got home from
watching The Old Vic production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the local
cinema. And I can’t not write something about it. Perhaps because I went on my
own and could have this rant in the pub afterwards. Perhaps because it brought
into focus some things I’ve been thinking about, or around, lately. At some
point I’ll do this post in Swedish as well, but for now I’ll stick to English.
I might not be as into it then as I am now, this things tend to pass after a
night’s sleep, but in that case I’ll just do a rewrite in the translation.

A.Great play! Lately I’ve been feeling slightly ashamed of
the fact that I’ve read and seen very few of “the classics”. I remember reading
some Arthur Miller in my teens – but that was mainly because it was some of the
few plays in the library. There was Shakespeare of course, which didn’t really
interest me in my teens, apart from Romeo and Juliet, thanks to Baz Luhrmann.
There was some Strindberg, but I’ve never got on with him. Instead I read Americans
plays from the post-war years, by playwrights like Williams and Miller.
Although I don’t think I ever read The Crucible, probably because I thought it
was going to be difficult and long. Which wasn’t a very good excuse for not
reading it. Obviously a lot of the hype around the plays has to do with Miller
and the McCarthy era in American history. Watching the play today it resonates
with that, but it also resonates with things going on right now, or 20 years
ago. All of this without any misplaced attempts of making it “contemporary”. It
is contemporary because it is human. It doesn’t have to be forced to be
contemporary. It is. And I, watching, can figure it out all on my own, without
the restrictions of too much directing trying to bend the play one way or the
other.

B.Great production! No production of is perfect of
course. For me, a lot of the things that weren’t so great were mostly to do
with the filming. It was done slightly differently to the previous two I’ve
seen in the cinema, both done through NT Live. This was “captured” live but there
were certain effects (like pictures on top of each other, slow-motion, etc)
added on to. The space, and the way the stage was set up, brought its own
problems with it for filming I’m sure. But what made it a great production for
me, was that it was about the story, all the way. The actors knew what they,
and their characters, were doing. There was purpose to all of their lines and
actions. They might have misled the audience from time to time, keeping us on
our toes, but it all came together, they were all whole characters who had to
make decisions and take actions. And the language as well, as an equal part of
the whole artistic expression – that something that I had a long discussion
about today with a collegue. Unfortunately that seems to be quite rare at the
moment. All of these things made it a pleasure to watch, even through a screen.
It started out with the stakes high, and just kept raising them, but all within
the logic of the world of the story. A lot of tears, sweat and saliva, but hey,
for once it worked. A bit of stalking around the stage because burdened with
trying to save you wife and being helpless in the face of mass psychosis (more
or less), but hey, that didn’t really bother me either.

C.How great is it to be able to see productions like these?
It’s really great. This is the first time I’ve seen this play performed and it
was great to see it in a production like this.

Röster från Skillnaden: Svenska Teatern från 1930-talet till 2010-talet (utgiven av Förlaget) /// My book about the history of the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki from the 1930s to the 2010s (published by Förlaget)